Ace of Swords
by The Illusion Mage
Summary: Select one Tarot-card-wielding Draco Malfoy. Add in the Dark Lord's bane, the irritable Potions professor, the youngest Weasley child, and the werewolf going through a mid-life crisis. Stir for disaster... (rating applies to later chapters)
1. Cheap Red Wine

Ace of Swords

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ 

The boy, caught somewhere between demon and angel, did not sleep. A twisted hybrid of dark and light, a fine, delicate balance, his fingers twined with the bedsheets, eyes made of winter storms and pallid skies and the far north cast towards his semi-open door. Weak illumination spilled into the shadows, and so did the familiar cadances of home.

Home, Draco Malfoy thought, _funny, the definitions you can come up with when there's nowhere left to go._

He listened silently as Lucius did his regular, sweeping stroll down the hallway and towards his bed chambers. The dull _thud_ of feet on sumptuously-carpeted floors filled Draco's hearing. His hands tightened on the sheets in an uncontrollable spasm of bitterness when Lucius paused for just a moment. The family patriarch's shadow filled the doorway, lingered for awhile, and then vanished.

One more night. One more night, and then Draco would be gone, away from Malfoy Manor and beginning his sixth year at the drafty old castle that called itself Hogwarts. He ground his teeth in a habitual gesture.

Harry Potter wasn't the only one who hated summer.

The argument with his father still burned on Draco's tongue. There was never, and probably never would be, a woman, child, man, standard, or rule that was 'good enough' for Lucius Malfoy. It was a wonder that he had ever signed himself up for fatherhood in the first place; Lucius seemed too misanthropic, too haughty, too imbued with the old structure of living, to ever sire a son and instruct him in the ways of life.

Narcissa's voice suddenly filled the air. Draco tensed. Keen ears managed to steal some snatches of the crisp conversation going on between husband and wife.

"...going out for a bit. Won't be too long..."

"...have told you how it..."

"...didn't say that! And you should know better!"

Silence.

Narcissa broke the strained tranquility by saying something that was comletely inaudible to her son's ears. More footfalls followed, and Lucius' angry voice echoed down the corridor after her.

Draco turned his face away from the false light of the hall, and towards the truer brilliance of the moon outside. Its rays danced impishly through his curtains, only halfway drawn. The light pooled in various corners of his room, and melted into a soft visual ballad.

Summer was not sultry heat and cool water and sticky treats. Summer had never been about that sort of thing. This was a season when Draco retired home, to an arrogant bastard of a father, who's approval and acceptance he so badly wanted for reasons that were obscured from his own vision. As a child, he'd looked up to his sire, no doubt about that, bragged about Lucius as most boys his age were wont to do. Now, he saw that very pride under a very different light. A _perverse_ light.

He could try over and over again, could extend his lifetime into two more, but it _would never be enough_. Nothing was ever 'enough' for Lucius.

A door closed.

Draco slipped from the mattress and into the hall.

What little affection Lucius had shown for his son as a baby, an infant, a toddler, had withered and died upon the passage of Draco's sixth birthday.

"It's called conditional love_," he'd overheard one of his classemates saying, "you're liked when you do something that pleases another person, and _dis_liked when you don't."_

He pushed the voice from his mind, shoving open Narcissa's bedroom door. He entered the vacant chamber, shivering at the sudden, intense cold. Crossing the starkly-furnished place, Draco slipped down to the floor, just beside his mother's dresser. He took the liberty of opening the bottom cabinet himself.

The stack lay there, atop a frilly shirt, encased in its usual cardboard holder.

Tarot cards.

Draco chuckled to nobody in particular. He'd played with these cards as a child, flipping them over, arranging them, drawing them one by one to see what the future concealed from normal eyes. Lifting the deck from its peaceful resting place, he removed the cards. His mother's, but she never really seemed to care.

A sudden wave of memory assaulted Draco, and he gave himself over to it.

Five years old, Father was sitting on the chair in the Formal room. Talking to somebody, but to a kid, conversation between adults doesn't really matter much, especially when they have more pressing issues at hand.

He'd harassed Lucius for a little while, and had been pushed away six times over. On the seventh try, however, Father seemed to have had enough. He broke off from the discourse and leaned down.

He'd actually stooped, bent, **leaned down** for his son.

A shadow of a smile flickered at the corners of his mouth, and he'd told Draco to go find his Mum instead...

Pureblood, Mudblood, upper class, oldest family, Muggle-born, Muggles...

The words swirled over and over in Draco's mind. He flipped over a card. The Tower symbol. He grimaced.

Merlin. What does Father want? Emotion means little or nothing to him, even when emotion is there_. Those beliefs of his, about social divisions, hard control, they're my beliefs, too. So why am I questioning them?_

He toyed with the cards for a few minutes longer, drawing the Ace of Swords, Two of Pentacles, the Death Card, and finally, the Emperor. Packing the deck back into its secure bundle, Draco hesitated before slipping them into his pocket.

Mum won't notice. She never even touches these things, anyway.

Draco rose from the chilly floor, and exited the room. On the way back down the corridor, he passed the large mirror hanging from the wall, and his pace increased. He didn't like mirrors. Mirrors made you look into your own eyes, and made you examine what you saw there.

A leaf caught in the river's current has no clue as to where it's headed. It just plunges onwards, too rootless to question its own doubts, taking security in the only way it knows.

The mask had fallen back into place by the time Draco shut his bedroom door.

***

He smelled of cheap wine. Cheap, red wine, the sort you can get for almost nothing per bottle. Ginny Weasley cringed away from him, even when the long fingers opened, spilling the papers onto her desk. She was counting every word that dropped from the taut lips and adding them to the 'reasons why I hate Severus Snape' list. The black robes swirled, and then he was gone, blending into the shaded part of the dungeon, the place where his desk sat.

It was unusually warm down in the bowels of Hogwarts castle, and Ginny was thankful for that. Now, all that was left to wish for were lights to give form to the darkness that comprised the place. Taking the quill up in one hand, she grit her teeth and tried to concentrate on the parchment in front of her. But all she could think of was how Gred and Forge would have teased her if they'd seen the situation she'd gotten herself into.

"Get _writing_, Weasley," the dour vocalization prodded. Ginny sighed and bent her head to her work.

It hadn't been her idea, the prank, but it had landed her in detention anyway, firstly because she was in Gryffindor, and secondly, because the target of the prank had been Snape himself. The entire fiasco had been the brainchild of Seamus Finnigan, Dean Thomas, and surprisingly, Neville Longbottom, spurred onwards to courage by his fellow house-mates. It was a long and comlex scheme that made Ginny's head hurt, just thinking about it.

So don't _think about it,_ she deliberated sourly, _it doesn't matter how it started, or how it ended, all that matters is that you're here, in detention with Snape, and that you're going to go hunt down and slaughter Seamus, Neville, and Dean when this is finished._

If it _ever_ got finished.

Time slowly started wearing itself away, and so did the thick stack of essay papers, though not by much. Ginny's lips thinned when she counted the remainder of what was left to do. After throwing a longing glance out the door, wistfulness began to turn back into an ever-rising floodtide of irritation.

Bitter old git. He enjoys_ doing this to his students, there's no denying that. Bitter, biased..._

She stopped herself before she could get any further.

No. Don't think about that; it'll stop you from finishing as quickly as possible. Think about something else...something else...

The tune began in the back of her head, soft, quiet, something she had heard on a Muggle radio. Ginny's quill began to rise and fall in time with cadances. A peaceful sense of premonition washed over the shores of her psyche.

// My mother said, there's only one way,   
Sweet angel boy, narrow and straight,   
Time, it has passed, teachings, they fade,   
Now her angel boy has gone astray //

He was watching her now. Ginny jerked, startled at the realization that she had been humming out loud. Cheeks flushed, she bent her head to the paper, working more vigorously than ever.

The tune still played.

// I've felt the hand of the Devil, felt his breath on my skin,   
Dip me into the water, wash me again,   
Can I still be forgiven for all of these things?   
Or have I gone too far now,   
Have I lost my wings? //

Snape had risen from his seat. Closer, step by step, he was approaching her desk. Ginny tensed when he cast his own shadow over her, going over the words written on paper.

She loved Potions well enough, it was up there with Charms and Transfigurations.

It was the teacher she couldn't stand.

// I found a priest, I spoke my mind,   
Asked if I'd sinned one too many times,   
He said 'my son, you're only a man,'   
Then I said 'sir, you don't understand...' //

Lengthy fingers reached and plucked the quill from her hand in one deft motion. Ginny stared directly at the parchment, hoping Snape would met out whatever punishment he wished to, and get it over with as quickly as possible. She was surprised when he did nothing of the sort.

Inky eyes traced what Ginny had written, and her teacher raised his eyebrows in an expression that was almost...

..._approving?_

Ginny twisted awkwardly in her seat, trying to figure out what was going on. Snape gave a dry chuckle.

"Eloquent, Ms. Weasley. _Very_ eloquent. You may go."

She rose from her seat, nearly turning it over in the process. Hastening for the door, she exited on legs that had fallen asleep due to sitting for so long.

An angel, she thought. _A black-clothed, wingless, detestable angel. Dumbledor really needs to find somebody else to teach Potions._

***

"One-hundred percent asshole you are. Did your mother ever tell you that? Oh, sorry, forgot. She can't. She's--"

"Asshole, huh? Least I don't spend my time _kissing_ ass."

"Your intellect could do with some broadening. After all, they say brains--"

"Shut your face, Malfoy. I've heard that one before."

"Well at--"

"MISTER POTTER!"

Both boys jumped, startled out of their verbal war. Professor Trelawney came sweeping down the aisle, glaring daggers at the two. It was hot and stuffy as usual in Divinations class, but Harry wasn't thinking about that. His mind was trained on what Trelawney had to say.

"It would be highly appreciated if you and Mister Malfoy began paying attention during class. What do you expect to do when final exams come out?"

Harry's jaw dropped. Sparkling green eyes darted over towards Ron, sitting opposite him. The old fraud was beginning to sound more and more like McGonagall than herself.

Bangles clattered together on Trelawney's wrist as she gave both Draco and Harry one last, reproving Look and then strode back to the front of the class. The garish colors and hoop earrings the woman wore hadn't changed in the least over a course of Merlin-knew-how-many years.

Harry sighed, resting his chin on his hand.

Wish I'd dropped this class, like Hermione. Hmm...wonder how old Trelawney actually is... wonder why Malfoy's such a bloody git... wonder how many times Snape broke his nose to get it into that shape... or was he born with it? Fascinating facial anatomy, that man has...

"...studying Tarot Cards. These are restricted to sixth years due to the fact that..."

Harry cast a lazy glance at the blonde sitting to his left.

Tarot Cards, huh? Wonder why Malfoy look so interested. Good God... Parvati's still as fascinated with this class as she was three years ago. And so's Lavender. It's hot--wish she'd open the window or something. Sitting too far away to do it myself...maybe Ron will if...

The Boy-Who-Lived found his feet tapping against the wooden floor on their own accord, beating out a steady, unconscious rhythm. Ron glanced curiously over at Harry. Harry glanced back and gave a lopsided smile, then allowed his mind to drift off once more. It was so _easy_ to let one's head wander in this particular class...so...easy...

...Number Four, Privet Drive. All adventure seemed to begin here, Harry thought, spooning the remnants of the cooking pot into his bowl. From somewhere deeper inside the house, a voice beckoned to him. He turned, startled.

Aunt Petunia. Again. What did she want this time?

His legs seemed to move all by themselves, and suddenly, he was no longer within the Dursley household. He was walking further and further down a dark corridor, and it was no longer Aunt Petunia who called for him.

It was a different articulation, a different pitch, a different voice altogether. He strained...attempting to hear what it had to...

"...essay on Tarot Cards, if you think you know enough to not pay attention to what I'm saying."

Harry jerked into awareness, bewildered at the sudden snicker that rippled through the classroom. Ron was shooting him sympathetic glances. Harry looked up, surprised to find Professor Trelawney standing over his seating place. She was glaring at her student.

"Is that clear, Mister Potter?"

"Is wha...?"

"The essay," she said, fast losing patience. "I'll expect it in two days. Three full parchments on the history of Tarot Cards, and another on the relationship between the Emperor and the Hierophant. See how much _you_ know," she sniffed.

Harry's jaw dropped for the second time that day. Ron's glances turned from friendly sympathy to downright pity.

"Yes, Professor."

Malfoy snickered. Harry glared at his rival, then resigned himself to his own fate.

Merlin. Wish I knew how to better avoid trouble...

***

It was Ginny who found the cards.

Draco had dropped them on his was out of Divinations class, and the youngest Weasley had picked them up, and began toying with then. There was no name, no clear label stating who's they were, and at the moment, staring at the Two of Swords, Ginny was fast losing a battle of honesty with herself. Keeping the lost deck was an option who's temptation proved more than she could handle.

The last bloody rays of late afternoon found themselves snared in the windows of the old castle. Ginny sat on the steps leading to the Gryffindor common room, absolutely fascinated. She had heard rumors that the sixth years were studying Tarot. A grimace covered her features.

Hmph. We fifth years seem to be getting all the boring stuff.

Flipping the cards over and over without really knowing what she was doing, Ginny read the names emblazoned on the bottom of each one.

Empress. Two of Pentacles. Emperor. Lovers. Hierophant. Fool.

She paused at the Fool card.

What was that Percy was telling Fred? The Fool is...innocence. The beginning of something. Or whatever. Hard to remember.

Pulling her knees up to her chest, Ginny fought with the tangles of her robes, wishing for just a moment that she'd brought pants along. Molly had taken the liberty of doing her daughter's packing for her; Ginny had had an overload of homework during the summer, and thus, had ended up with mostly skirts in the luggage.

The Tower card. What was that again? Chaos, anarchy. Sudden, abrupt change. Or was that the Emperor? No...no, that can't be. The Emperor is order, isn't that right? Or was that the... Merlin_. These things are so appealing, but so confusing at the same time._

She was about to rearrange the pattern of the cards once more (Ginny had seen others performing such a gesture, and was acting purely on imitation), when a shadow cast itself over her. She looked up, startled.

"It's getting late. Shouldn't you be headed for the common room? Or will I have to take more points from Gryffindor?"

A few seconds passed before Ginny found herself able to reply, mortified at being caught dabbling in a type of magic that was superfluous, to say the least.

"N--no, Professor. I was going right now."

Snape looked down his nose at her, expression both disdainful and contemplative at once. Ginny began packing the cards in, but not before her teacher stopped her at one particular card, defered her with a single glare.

"The Empress. The _trademark_ card." A corner of his mouth quirked slightly, as though he were entangling himself in anamnesis. He released Ginny after what seemed like sempiternity, breaking his watch and telling her to get on to the common room. She stared after him, perplexed at his own actions and her own thoughts.

He smelled of wine. Cheap, red wine, the sort you can...

She shook herself out of her reverie, glancing down at the cardboard casing. Flipping it over once, Ginny nearly dropped the thing when her eyes met the name she had failed to notice was there before.

Of **course** I failed to notice. Look how tiny that thing is...crouched in its own little corner...but... didn't Ron say that Harry's...

Small as the words were, there was no denying what they said:

Lily Evans.


	2. Path to the Storm

Ace of Swords

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Harry stared at the cards in his hand, numbness washing over him in a floodtide of want, regret, and then, nothing at all. The material was rough to the touch, and Ginny's eyes drilled into his forehead, searing through the contents of his mind, seeming to soar past all of the obstacles thrown up by years of living, and strike the inner core with alarming force.

It felt oh-so-very odd to be sitting on the common room couch and observing as the fragile wall between past and present shattered itself under the force of a single object. But it was happening--there was no denying that. Outside, the night sky, impartial to the made-up boundaries between Muggle and Wizarding world, stretched enticingly over what had once been sun, casting its depiction of legends from the maw of yesteryear through the thunderous voices of the stars, joining together, straining towards the last, haunting refrain of the age-old song.

  
Harry looked up from the cards to the open the window, where Hedwig sat, snowy feathers ruffled against the intruding zephyr. Then, the Boy-Who-Lived turned back to Ginny.

"Can I have them?"

The girl blinked, then double-blinked. "Can you wha...?"

"Can I have them." It was a statement now, not a question. The redhead blushed. _She blushes so easily,_ Harry thought.

"Yes, yes! Of course you can. They are..._were_...your mother's. It's only fair."

Harry leaned forward. Something about Ginny's tone of voice told him she was loathe to give up what she had just discovered. He sighed, a twinge of guilt suddenly poking at the corner of his mind. Harry shot Ginny a crooked smile.

"Thanks...um...thanks." There was an awkward silence. "This means a lot."

"I know it does."

More silence. It tore through the room like a eager spirit, dancing its way into both awarenesses and provoking a jarring sort of alienation.

Harry bit his lip.

"So...let's try this again. You found the cards in the hallway."

"Yes."

"Just after getting out of Ancient Runes."

"Yes."

"Hmm. Fifth years in Ancient Runes...that means that I was in Divinations--or getting out of Divinations class at the time. And you didn't see who dropped them?"

"No."

"I..." Harry seemed to hesitate, his own behavior becoming apparent to both himself and Ginny. He had always been one to say what he needed, then move on, not pick the other person apart with questions that could be only apprehensively responded to.

"Thanks...again," he said, attempting to project as much warmth into his voice as was possible.

Ginny's blush deepened, and she nodded. At a loss for words, the duo stared for a moment. Then, the girl broke eye contact, rushing up the stairs to the dormitories all-too-quickly.

Harry glanced after her, then allowed his green eyes to stray back to the deck of cards in hand. He turned them over and over and over and over, _Lily Evans_ catching the light from the dying embers every now and then.

_Lily Evans._

Wife. Mother. Daughter.

Stranger.

The last barriers seemed to come down all at once, and Harry found himself imagining things, pulling this and that out of a false memory. He would see her, red hair, smiling face, a shy, feminine thing, unbreakable despite the apparent fragility. He would see her, poring diligently over a textbook by the light of a a candle in its demise, brow furrowed slightly. He would see her, head thrown back, laughing just as loud and lusty as any boy, plunging recklessly into the unknown alongside his--

..._my father._

Harry pulled his knees up to his chest, frowning slightly. He reached out, opening the casing and withdrawing the cards.

_So, Mum was into this sort of thing. I wonder...and who would have had this in his or her possession to begin with? I _really_ wonder..._

He had always prided himself in his early-learned independence, and feeling a need as immense as this was galling to say the least. He was, after all, _the_ Harry Potter, flawed perfection, willing to offer up his life for his loved ones, the Dark Lord's bane, savior, hero....sent by none other than the gods themselves. He was immortal, and incapable of feeling _reliant_.

If only they knew. _Merlin_, if only they knew!

Growing up without parents had not left him sad, an emotional wreck, or bitter in the least. Merely hollow. A spot that screamed to be filled. A longing that could not be quenched. A hunger that refused to die.

The embers of the hearth seemed to flare up with a startling abruptness, but that could very well be just another illusion. After all, Harry had been feeling exceedingly tired...

_Aunt Petunia's voice was beckoning to him again. He turned instinctively, making an attempt to follow it. The walls of Number Four, Privet Drive seemed to tumble into nothingness, vanishing around him and giving way to a dark corridor._

_And suddenly, the voice was no longer that of Aunt Petunia's. It was different. So very different...so very..._maternal_. He began walking faster, faster, needing to reach the end of the tunnel. Light, thick and honeyed, spilled into the darkness. He reached out for it..._

_Red hair flashed in what little illumination there was. Green eyes glinted, and, rather abruptly, Lily Evans was standing before her son. Harry nearly choked, coming to a sudden halt. He wanted to talk to her, say something to her, but he could not. The words caught in his throat._

_The smile broadened. Lily held something up for Harry to see, and his gaze widened. It was a card, depicting a beautiful young woman kneeling on a patch of grass, arms outstretched, breasts bared. The fullness of her flesh sang of intense profusion, and one word had claimed the bottom half of the image: Empress._

_"It's your protection, James." Lily grinned, then laughed teasingly. Harry tried to tell her that he was not James, but she vanished into smoke, and the card changed from Empress to the opprobrious Tower symbol._

_Blonde hair shone despite the lack of proper lighting. Draco Malfoy had surfaced, and he reached out, grasping the piece of stiffened paper with long fingers, then disappeared, just as Lily had done, leaving Harry..._

...Awake. Very, very, awake. He jerked involuntarily, green eyes snapping wide open, raw, unabridged torrent of emotion left unchecked.. Cheeks flushed, Harry scanned the common room. The embers of the hearth had all but died out, and it took several seconds before he realized that his own fingers were clutching the fabric of the couch _hard_, just short of ripping into the material.

Shaken, Harry forced his muscles to relax all at once, and he collapsed backwards on the seat, staring unseeingly up at the ceiling. Dawn would come soon, he hoped, and vanquish the ghosts that flitted through his psyche like the transparent specters they were.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

_"It's your protection, James," Lily grinned, then laughed teasingly. Ginny tried to speak, to tell the redhead that the person she was addressing was not James, but Harry's mother vanished into smoke before she could, and the card changed from Empress to Lovers. Draco Malfoy's face surfaced, and he turned, the usual leer pasted onto his features. He laughed, fingers closing around the Lovers and then disappeared as Lily and done, leaving..._

Ginny Weasley woke up, hands clutching violently at her linens. Eyes wide, she was filled with the sudden, preternatural, sickening, _abhorrent_ sensation that she had not been in her own body, that she had been seeing through somebody else's eyes, despite the fact that the memory of the dream was fading with startling rapidity, leaving behind only a vague sense of insecurity, and the sudden need to dance memory back to life. Throwing the covers off, she attempted to fill her lungs with much-needed air, but found it too stuffy to do so. Ginny rolled over, avoiding collision with the floor by mere inches, then stumbled to the window, thrusting her head out and greedily drinking oxygen.

_Not enough. Good Merlin, still not enough._

Withdrawing, she glanced frantically around. The unprotected stairwell caught her line of vision.

Throwing a backwards glance to make sure everybody was truly asleep (Hermione in particular), Ginny bolted for the opening, managed to reach the bottom of the stairs without her knees giving way, then set her sights on the exit to the Gryffindor common room.

Not before catching a glimpse of Harry, however.

She paused, eyes locked with hopeless tenacity upon the slumbering form. Girlish wistfulness, ideality, virtue, all came rushing back to her. It had been a young firstling's infatuation with the Boy-Who-Lived, nothing more, nothing less. How many afternoons she'd spent, fantasizing, how many days, nights, wasted, wishing he were her's. Affection in vain.

They were friends now, not _close_ friends, mind you, but _friends_. Ginny had stepped back, taken a good, long look at the rift between Harry and herself, a rift that would most likely never be bridged, and then turned away, not wanting to look anymore. She had run from the scene of the impossible, seeking solace in a Ravenclaw named Bran Athertorn, a boy of her age.

Everybody knew what "solace" had very quickly turned into, one hot summer's night in one of Hogwarts' many rooms, a place where both Bran and Ginny should never have been in the first place.

The first loss of innocence had been a bittersweet hymn--grasping hands and whispered voices and screamingly obvious incompetence to perform. And when morning's first rays had melted the mist from the outer grounds, when the sun had broken down the walls of dusk, he was gone, she had come to a rude awakening, alone, feeling as though nothing had been gained and that everything had been lost.

The rest of her days as a fourteen-year-old had slipped by in a haze of languid summer, irritating brothers, overbearing parents, and a secret only she knew about.

Ginny was wary when it came to the carnal now. The house of flesh, human pleasure, had remained untouched ever since Bran Atherton. The thought of waking up alone...the thought of plainly _being _alone frightened her. Aloneness was cold; aloneness was savage; aloneness was an empty void that you would spend the rest of your life floating in once you stepped over the edge.

She didn't want that.

Clambering out of the portrait-hole, Ginny found corridor dark, deserted. She shivered. Dawn would arrive in a few hours.

Inhaling sharply, Ginny continued walking, pacing back and forth, up and down. Blood pounded in her veins; memory sang in her ear, repeating one word over and over again:

_Alone, alone, alone, alone, alone...!_

_I don't want to be alone!_ she answered defiantly.

Footsteps from behind alerted her: somebody else was awake. She froze, startled, then turned when a familiar voice rang out, bouncing from wall to wall in an endless cacophony of sound.

"Weasley. What are you doing out here?"

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Weasley. What are you doing out here?"

Draco Malfoy looked undeniably different when the sneer that usually graced his features had vanished, replaced by an expression of genuine bewilderment. He waited for her to reply, and was semi-jolted back to reality at her words. Ginny stared levelly at him; perhaps it was Ron's disdain, perhaps it was Fred and George's attitude towards 'all things Malfoy.' Whatever it was, _it_ had served well in nurturing a certain brand of animosity between the two, something that had developed over time, finally exploding into a silent war between the heir of one of the wizarding world's oldest families, and the shy, redheaded girl - the type whose father would castrate any boy stupid enough to so much as lay a finger on his baby.

"My name is _Ginny_," she corrected, sounding very much like a nagging old biddy. "And these are the steps to the Gryffindor tower. I don't see what a Slytherin is doing around here, unless it involved some diabolical scheme I'd have to rat you out to McGonagall for."

Ginny had expected something like pure, unadulterated fear to cross Draco's visage, but all he did was shake his head, as though he were too busy to be snarky. Ginny grimaced in distaste, then watched in curiosity as Harry Potter's nemesis hesitated once before turning.

"Don't try anything on me that would call for revenge, Weasley," he said, falling backwards into his old, unpleasant self. He began striding to the bottom of the stairwell from whence he'd come, Ginny's murderous stare on his retreating form, wishing desperately that the staircase would decide to shift itself at the last minute and leave Draco in complete and utter disorientation.

She got something better.

Malfoy walked off the last step with a jaunty sort of twist...

...and ran right into none other but the head of Slytherin.

Draco, in a mad attempt at stopping, bowled head-first into Snape. The Potions master gave a startled yelp and went flying backwards, landing in a heap of black robes, shrieking for Draco to get off of him. Draco responded by complying, hastily removing himself from on top of his professor. He would have been content to slink off into the shadows had Severus not grasped him by the collar and dragged him backwards, forcing him to stay. There was a stony glint in Snape's black eyes.

_I don't believe it,_ Ginny thought wryly. _The halls seem to be seething with Slytherins tonight._

Severus' voice was hard as he adressed his star pupil.

"I want to know," he hissed, "what _exactly_ is going on here; why are you out prowling the halls when you're _supposed_ to be _in bed_?"

Something about her teacher's tone of voice told Ginny he was really saying something along the lines of: "I don't care how late you stay out. What I want to know is _why_ you were careless enough to allow yourself to be caught?"

Draco seemed at a loss for words. Snape looked furious; for a moment in time, Ginny assumed he was going to take away points from his own house. Instead, he released Draco and turned his eyes upon the youngest Weasley girl. His voice barely totaled a whisper.

"And you, Weasley. Do you have a good explanation for being out here?"

Ginny was about to say that no, she didn't, but neither did Draco. She never got the chance to; Snape jerked a thumb over his shoulder and in the direction of the empty staff room. Ginny blanched. This would make the third detention she'd had with Snape in one year. Vexed, the girl's reticent aegis (3) dropped, and she spoke up, demonstrating the reason as to why she'd been sorted into Gryffindor.

"But Professor Snape! That's not fair," she protested. There was a sanguinary blade in her tone this time, something that very rarely reared its head. Snape raised one eyebrow.

"What was that, Ms. Weasley?"

"I said..." she hesitated. Draco was shooting her eager looks, displaying his willingness to see her all but decapitated. She turned away from her fellow miscreant and glared up at Hogwarts' most hated teacher. "...I said..._that's not fair_."

Severus actually managed to look exasperated. "Not fair that I'm punishing you for being somewhere you were never supposed to be in the first place?"

"No," Ginny plunged on, regardless of the consequences. "Not that. _You're_ not fair, that's what."

Draco's expression had gone from malice to fascinated horror to spiteful pity in a matter of seconds.

"_You're_ not fair. This is bias. I'm going to get in trouble, and Malfoy's going to get away with murder just because he's in Slytherin. _Your_ house."

"Enough," Snape snapped. He looked tired, fed up, weary..._livid_. Gesturing towards the staff room once more, he ordered Ginny towards it. "On you go, Weasley. I'll be there to deal with you in a few minutes."

Draco, who had been watching the entire time, seemed about to vanish back up the corridor when Snape halted him.

"Not so fast, Mister Malfoy."

Draco looked stunned. Snape's face was set in stone.

"You, too. In the staff room, with Ms Weasley."

Draco glanced unbelievingly at his Potions professor. When Snape's expression refused to waver, he stormed off after Ginny, mumbling something about how his father would hear of this. Ginny snickered to herself, then quelled her own mirth at the prospect of having to spend what looked like _ten entire minutes_ in the staff room with none other than Draco Malfoy.

_Good Merlin...this is going to be a long night..._

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

_The origins of Tarot are unclear, revealing themselves to neither wizards nor Muggles. Many speculate that this art of Divinations has roots in Greece or Egypt; some even go as far as to guess that they have roots in the Orient. Disregarding where they came from, Tarot was made especially popular in both France and Italy in the late 1400s._

Harry lifted his quill from the parchment and sighed. All of his weariness, all of the sleep lost, seemed to settle on the still air and then vanish with that single breath. The deck of cards were scattered in random positions upon the lifeless stone of the steps leading to the Ravenclaw tower. Pliant rays of early-morning sunlight cascaded through a skylight, spilling onto the floor and creating vortexes of the contemplative mood that settles with such subtle ease when one has locked himself away in a quiet place.

The quill hovered for just a moment longer, then dipped artfully back to its task.

_There are many names for 'Tarot,' some of which may aid in pointing us in the right direction as to the whereabouts of their origin:_

_1.) Trao....a Hebrew word, meaning 'gate.'  
2.) Orat...Latin, 'it speaks.'  
3.) Taru...Hindu, for 'cards.'  
4.) Torah....Hebrew, 'the law.'_

_From what can be gathered by looking at these names..._

The quill lifted and fell, lifted and fell, all in turn. Harry found his own foot tapping out a rhythm to go along with the steady up and down, soon becoming immersed in his own thoughts, as he usually did while writing.

The Ravenclaw staircase seemed the most logical place to get some work done. It was mostly silent around this area, and the students themselves had the notorious reputation of heading down to great hall for breakfast rather late. Pausing for a moment, Harry rubbed a sore neck. The vibrant green of his gaze came to settle upon the cards' casing, carelessly tossed into its own little corner.

_Lily Evans._

Friend. Martyr. Parent.

Stranger.

_Concentrate,_ he told himself. _Concentrate._

_...thus concluding, we now come to the second matter: a demonstration of the interaction between two particular cards. Namely, the Emperor and the Heirophant. These symbols reinforce each other, both placing heavy emphasis on a structured way of doing things...._

Harry lifted his head. His eyes fell inevitably upon the Empress card, so opposite to the tokens he was reporting on. Life. Abundance. Luxuriance. He squinted.

Something was wrong...

...something was....

?

The hand guiding Harry's quill fell motionless. He reached down, the gestures his fingers made an eloquent, silent expression of true confusion. They closed around the Empress, lifted her up, and his eyes narrowed.

Words filled the bottom half of the card, words that had not been there in the first place. Harry squinted harder, surprised when the text became readable to him, and even more so at the language that it was in:

_"Il gioco finchÃ© la Scheda Ã¨ trovata, o gioca nell'EternitÃ ."_

"Italian, Mr. Potter," said the voice at Harry's back, the presence he had been sensing for the past five minutes. He turned to find Severus Snape hovering somewhere beyond the stairs, looking just as perplexed as Harry felt. "I see it's finally shown up, after all these years."

"Professor Snape...what?..."

Snape looked resigned. "Come with me, Potter."


End file.
